I know this won’t be popular but I will say it anyway, Bryce Harper is not worth $350 to $400 million and any team that signs him for that amount will pay dearly and not only from a financial perspective.
I grant you that Harper is just 26 years old and baseball wisdom says that his best years are ahead of him. However; you would be a fool to ignore history, Harper has played for Washington for seven seasons and he has averaged 132 games a year, (81% of the schedule) he has exceeded 150 games twice. His 2015 MVP season was his one great season and Harper has hit 30+ home runs just twice, has 100 RBI once and he has a .279 career average. If you look at 2015 as an outlier season in which his WAR was 10.0, his other six seasons average out to a WAR of 2.9.
Harper is an above average player but he has not shown that he is the super-star that the experts predicted so why pay him like he is a player like no one before him? Harper’s work ethic has also been questioned in the past. Harper is player that plays for Harper and the team is secondary, the Washington Nationals will be a better team without him and they won’t be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to boot. A win-win situation for the Nationals and their fans.
Scott Boras will find a way to make Bryce Harper a richer man, he always does, because there is a sucker born every minute, but this might be the best hustle ever by today’s version of P.T. Barnum.
He may not be worth $350-$400 million. Still, his numbers on Baseball Prospectus look much better than the picture you paint with only WAR: https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/card/66018/bryce-harper
Also, he is a better teammate than you give him credit for. I only remember him getting into it with a relief pitcher for not hustling. Yes, he does self promote and has said he does that to in turn help promote the game of baseball. Hundreds of other athletes in all sports do the same thing without criticism.
You may not like his personality or something about him. That shouldn’t get projected to the biggest flimflam.
So true IMO, this is really one of the first time I’ve seen anyone say it.
While I think he is a good player he is not in the same league as Mike Trout. He is not worth the high dollars that his delusional agent thinks he is worth. Someone giving him a BIG PAY DAY at all is poor thinking for a GM. He is a 279 hitter with with some pop in his bat……that is all…..he plays 80 percent of the season on average so who their right mind would think he is worth more than 12 to 15 million a year.
SCOTT BORAS……QUIT SNIFFING MODEL GLUE, TAKING MUSHROOMS & LSD because you are way out there and way off base even for your far fetch ideas on value….
“Is Bryce Harper the biggest Scott Boras flimflam ever?”
I dunno–that’s an awfully high bar! 🙂
Good article–thanks.